<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Wait For The Storm To Pass by screaminginternally</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22870609">Wait For The Storm To Pass</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/screaminginternally/pseuds/screaminginternally'>screaminginternally</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Pride and Joys [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Crimson Peak (2015)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU where Carter gives Edith IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR HER SAFETY, AU where Edith finds out about the Sharpe wives before marrying Thomas, Detective Work, Discussions of death, F/M, Graphic Description of Corpses, Implied Romance if You Tilt Your Head And Squint, Male-Female Friendship, Parent-Child Relationship, answer: give the evidence to the public and wait, how do you solve a crime when you can't prove a crime?</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 07:21:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,651</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22870609</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/screaminginternally/pseuds/screaminginternally</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It was going to break Edith’s heart, Carter knew, but he couldn’t in good conscience expect that British blaggard to keep his word. Carter left the papers on Edith’s writing table, right next to the typed copy of her novel manuscript, for Edith to find in the morning.</p><p>AU where Carter leaves Edith the proof of Thomas's marriages before he dies, and Edith very much Does Not want any part of that. In fact, she'd like for the Sharpe's to be held accountable for that. She'd also like for the murderer of her father to be brought to justice, please and thank you.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Edith Cushing &amp; Alan McMichael, Edith Cushing/Thomas Sharpe (minor)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Pride and Joys [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1691203</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Wait For The Storm To Pass</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So, this movie is five years old and I’ve been obsessed with it this whole time, but only now writing something for it. That tracks, right? Well, I guess I can blame Guy Ritchies’ The Gentlemen for reawakening my long-dormant Charlie Hunnam Thirst™, and how much I do actually love the Edith/Alan ship. Yes, Thomas is Tom Hiddleston, gothic romances, NBC’s Hannibal-vibes, blahblahblah, but also, consider: the perfectly lovely childhood-friends-to-lovers match, with a side order of crime-solving and ghost-hunting.  </p><p>Also, have you read samzillastomps’ Crimson Peak fic The Second Draft? You should, it’s very good.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was going to break Edith’s heart, Carter knew, but he couldn’t in good conscience expect that British blaggard to keep his word. Men claiming themselves to be in trade yet with hands that soft were never men you could trust.</p><p>Holly had given him the wedding certificate, Sharpe had done as Carter had asked, but he didn’t trust the man not to try to circumvent the deal – perhaps he’d write to Edith, proclaiming love and whatever he thought would convince her, and Edith would undoubtedly be furious with him, her father.</p><p>So, to ensure that his daughter couldn’t be lied to any longer, swindled by a cheat, a man married thrice to rich women, yet Sharpe was now without a penny. How? Bad investments, laziness, a lack of imagination to be clever with the money. However it was, Carter couldn’t in good mind give leave for <em>that</em> man to marry his only daughter. The only love Carter has left in the world.</p><p>Carter left the papers on Edith’s writing table, right next to the typed copy of her novel manuscript. Seeing the complete volume filled him with a strong pride – his daughter, the author. She’d refused allowing Carter to write to some publishers, Edith wanting to get the tome published for its own merits. Carter understood the emotion, and didn’t argue for the faster route towards publication; he didn’t doubt Edith would be successful, but he did certainly want it to be a success that was proportional to Edith’s passion for her craft. Her writing should be as loved as she loved her craft.</p><p>Leaving the evidence of a scoundrel next to her heart’s work did not bring Carter any form of pleasure, but it was a necessity to ensure Edith found it. He’d explain everything when he got home from work in the evening, after he went to his club for the morning – Edith could shout, cry, and be as angry as she wished. And then they’d move on. And someone who wanted more from her than a fortune and a pretty face could earn her tender heart.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Edith awoke feeling exhausted. Her eyes felt the kind of dry that comes from tears too many to hold back, and her throat was parched.</p><p>The pain of such a brutal rejection was one that she’d never experienced before, not ever. And it wasn’t just the rejection, but the insult as well – a man she’d enjoyed so much as to expect a proposal of marriage, disparaging her craft, her pleasure, after she’d spent such time connecting with him through it. The shock of such a brutal about-face of opinion hurt more than disappointed hopes.</p><p>Edith felt a twinge of tears well up again when she thought of what Thomas must have been thinking during those conversations – when he truly did not care for her work! Simply – what? Pulling her along by her passions, simply for his own amusement, simply to while away some hours to wait between meeting investors? Perhaps Thomas and Lucille found it easier to do that than commit themselves to honesty, because any other partner for their time would expect them to spend money they didn’t have.</p><p>Whatever their reason, Edith couldn’t forgive the insult.</p><p>But she also wasn’t sure what to do with herself, with her book. She’d put so much of herself into the work, but what if Thomas had simply said to her what Mr Ogilvie had been thinking, but simply too polite to say?</p><p>What if she’d simply been deluding herself all these years, thinking she had talent, that her stories had a worth, that people would enjoy reading them?</p><p>Was the passion she’d pinned herself to simply an empty thing, worth so little consideration from the world around her?</p><p>It was these disheartening thoughts that twittered about her head like birds as Edith pulled on her dressing grown, as she went into her writing room – a whole room of her father’s house, just for a hobby she’d wanted to make into a career, a passion that she’d never see to fruition –and put herself down in the chair in which she’d sat for so many days, ignoring the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, only being pulled away when her father or Annie, her maid, reminded her to eat. She’d spent so much of her life in this chair, her backside had left an indentation in the cushion of the seat, for heaven’s sake!</p><p>And all for nothing, Thomas Sharpe would have her believe. All as part of an inadvertent effort to create childish, uninformed, juvenile stories.</p><p>Her bleary gaze caught the sheaf of papers on the table in front of her. Her book, the diligently copied draft that she intended to send to another publisher in a few weeks, the sight of it taunted her. Taunted her dreams, her aspirations. She wanted to hate it. She hated that manuscript. Her eyes slid to the side of the book, catching on - - a marriage certificate?</p><p>Or a copy of a marriage certificate. What was that doing here?</p><p>Edith lifted the paper, grabbing for her glasses from where she’d left them the night before. Looking at small print made her eyes ache and temples throb, and her spectacles were useful to alleviate that.</p><p>It also gave her a few crucial seconds to mentally prepare herself for whatever it was she was about to see – she hadn’t put the paper on her desk, after all, so someone else must have. Mr Drakes, the butler, was unlikely, as was Annie or Cook or Smith, leaving – her father.</p><p>Her father had left a marriage certificate upon her desk, noting the legal matrimony between Sir Thomas Sharpe and a Miss Pamela Upton, dated 18--. Another certificate lay beneath it, for the legal matrimony between Sir Thomas Sharpe and a Miss Margaret McDermott, 18--. Edith was shocked to her core, not just for the evidence in her hands of Thomas Sharpe’s martial state, but for the fact that there lay a <em>third</em>marriage certificate, this time between Sir Thomas Sharpe to a Miss Enola Sciotti of Milan, only two short years ago, Edith felt bile rise in her throat. She hadn’t eaten anything yet this morning, but that was a cold comfort.</p><p>Edith didn’t know what to think – truly she didn’t. But she did want to vomit.</p><p>She didn’t, however, instead dropping the pages with shaking hands. She couldn’t stop shaking – her whole body felt like a quivering leaf.</p><p>Thomas’ opinion of her writing was inconsequential in the face of what Edith had held in her hands. This – this was something depraved! A withheld truth of the highest immorality! Three wives, and yet he was searching for a fourth? Thomas Sharpe must either be a con man of the highest degree, a – a polygamist of such revulsion, or – or – a Bluebeard come to life! A man marrying women for whatever money they could bring to him, only for him to slaughter the lady, swindle her fortune until there was nothing left, and then move on to look for another!</p><p>Edith’s hands still hadn’t stopped quaking.</p><p>This realisation – the only one that reasonably fit all the facts, one that her father must have been so understandably upset to realise himself, or to have also drawn within his own sharp mind –</p><p>No wonder he’d been so disapproving of Edith’s affection for Thomas Sharpe.</p><p>Edith was startled by the appearance of Annie in the room. The maid was holding a package. “Miss Cushing, this was delivered to the house a few minutes ago.” Annie didn’t seem to register Edith’s emotional state, simply putting the delivery down on Edith’s table, Annie seeming distracted by something else.</p><p>Edith muttered thanks to her maid, unravelling the delivery with hands that couldn’t hold still. It was her manuscript – handwritten, the original copy. She’d given it to Thomas to read – his opinions of the tome were given back to her the night before. When Edith picked up her work, a letter that she hadn’t noticed fell to the table. It was addressed to her.</p><p>
  <em>Dear Edith,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>By the time you read this, I will be gone. Your father made evident to me that, in my present economic condition, I was not in a position to provide for you. And to this I agreed. He also asked me to break your heart – to take the blame. And to this I agreed too. By this time, I will surely have accomplished both tasks. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>But know this: when I can prove to your father that all I ask of him is his consent – and nothing more –then, and only then, will I come back for you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yours,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Thomas. </em>
</p><p>Edith threw herself to the washroom, upending her stomach into the toilet. Annie was drawn back to her side by the sound, and pulled back Edith’s hair from her face, asking what was wrong. Edith couldn’t vocalise her difficulty, her horror, instead only able to shake her head.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Eventually, Annie coaxed Edith into a warm bath to clean up, and perhaps ready herself to do something with her day beyond Edith’s usual sedentary habits. Edith felt inclined to agree. She needed to be out of her house – she needed air.</p><p>She went to the park, taking only her thoughts with her.</p><p>Thomas had fooled her – of course he had, he’d playacted affection, dug into her desire for someone to appreciate her work, applied himself to acting the lover.</p><p>Edith thought of Alan’s detective novels – he adored Arthur Conan Doyle’s crime books, and his favourite book as he entered his after-teen years, before he went to Oxford, had been Wilkie Collins’ <em>The Woman in White</em>. Edith had read some, but it wasn’t really her type of fiction. Eunice hadn’t liked them at all.</p><p>Eunice. Eunice McMichael, the socialite with a fortune to inherit. Eunice McMichael, the socialite who met Sir Thomas Sharpe first, and had provoked him to come to Buffalo with the expectation to court her, to propose. Eunice McMichael, from whom Edith had drawn away Thomas’. Why had Edith caught Thomas’ eye? Eunice and Edith each had a similar fortune, but Eunice’s preferred place was to be the belle of the ball. Eunice had so many friends, she was always enjoying some distraction and day of excitement – or at least, that was how she spoke whenever she had the chance. Edith kept to herself, rarely going to balls or events unless it was with her father. Her closest friend, Alan, had spent several years far away in England, and she’d been mostly alone.</p><p>Edith, who, without her father or perhaps Alan, had no one of financial means to search for her if she suddenly disappeared. Opposed to Eunice.</p><p>This thought hit her hard enough to make her sit down gracelessly onto the park seat.</p><p>Edith was the perfect woman to marry if you were a Bluebeard. Edith couldn’t lie to herself about this – if Eunice were to disappear to England, she’d have people who would want to know where she’d gone. They’d want to hear from her, they’d look into the man she married, the penniless baronet with an unmarried sister, and three other marriage certificates before Eunice. Edith? Her father was not a young man. Alan had his work, his practice, and a future where he could marry and he’d forget the introverted women he’d played with as a child.</p><p>Edith couldn’t fathom the cold-bloodedness of the plot. How could someone – why would someone – <em>how?</em></p><p>It was all she could think – <strong><em>how?</em></strong></p><p> </p>
<hr/><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>How?</em>
</p><p>This day didn’t feel real. This had to be a dream.</p><p>She was an orphan now. Her father was dead. His skull had been crushed against the sink in the bathroom of his club.</p><p>Edith had returned home from her walk in the park to be greeted at the front door by the policeman, asking her to join him at the station’s morgue, to identify her father. To identify her father’s <em>corpse</em>.</p><p>Alan was there when she arrived, immediately wrapping her in a hug, before the doctor in the police’s employ pulled back the sheet to reveal the – the <em>mess </em>that was left of her father’s <em>face</em>.</p><p>Edith shrank back towards Alan, letting him hold her. When she managed to calm some, enough to stop crying, Alan inspected her father’s body closer before pulling away to take Edith out of the room, promising to come back.</p><p>Edith spent the rest of her day in something of a blur – she didn’t remember the next several hours, and any memory she tried to recall was blurred over with a thick watery sheen of her own tears.</p><p>She had a vague memory of Annie and Mr Drakes telling her that someone – who was it? – was waiting outside to come in and speak, but she had no memory of admitting them into her home, except that Drakes came back a while later to say that the guest had left. Edith couldn’t remember who the guest had been, but she didn’t regret not seeing them. She hadn’t been in a state to see anyone.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Alan didn’t hesitate to bring his face close to Carter Cushing’s body. He’d been taught at medical school to be comfortable with the dead, to understand that the person, the soul, was gone from the body, but his mind seemed incapable of acknowledging that the dead body in front of him was Carter Cushing, Edith’s father, a man he had known all his life and the closest thing Alan had known for a father since his own passed. But there was no emotion for him to draw from. It was like hi emotions had been shut down from the moment he’d stepped into the morgue. As far as his medical mind was concerned, this was another dead body you could learn from.</p><p>And he could learn from this one.</p><p>The police and the medical examiner had all said that Carter’s death was the result of slipping on the wet floor of the club bathroom, striking his head; Alan couldn’t agree. Carter’s skull was <em>caved in</em>, the sink he’d struck had broken to pieces. That was not what occurred when someone slipped. That was what occurred when someone had grabbed a person’s head, and slammed it into a sink, with great force, multiple times.</p><p>This was a murder, it had to be.</p><p>But why?</p><p>Carter Cushing had no enemies – he had his rivals, his competitors in business, but when rich men are in competition, those men try to drive each other out of business, outdo one another. They don’t ambush a man in the clubroom and destroy that man’s <em>face</em>.</p><p>This was personal – Alan had been trained at Oxford, and he had been placed at a morgue to study human anatomy and the strange health peccadillos that accompanied people to their demise. He had seen the body of a man who had died by a slip and a strike to the head. He had seen the body of another man who had been hit with a hammer to the skull ‘til he died. Carter Cushing more closely resembled the second man than he did the first.</p><p>Alan didn’t want to consider this – he knew this information would distress Edith more simply having to identify her father did. He was thankful he’d caught himself from trying to closely inspect Carter before, when Edith had been in the room. Edith had loved – did love her father more than anyone in the world, Alan knew. He knew that for a fact, just like how he knew that, despite her father’s light hair, Edith had inherited her looks almost solely from her departed mother. Whom Carter had hopefully met again in heaven.</p><p>God, what a mess.</p><p>Alan leaned back into a chair, barely keeping himself from pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes – there was blood on the gloves he wore, after all. He squeezed his eyes closed, feeling a headache begin to form. The bright lights of the morgue had always provoked a headache in him after a few hours – it was why Alan was never able to seriously consider a career as a medical examiner.</p><p>Edith had surely been in enough distress from the event of her father’s dinner just last night – when Sharpe had behaved so cruelly to her, when it was evident to anyone aware of their connection that a very different outcome had been expected of their conversation. Edith didn’t need more tragedy in her life, and yet here it was. Lying in a table in front of Alan, barely recognizable from the loving, proud father he had been only a few hours ago.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>And so, for the second time in her young life, Edith buried a parent. The day was cold, rainy. In another lifetime, perhaps she would attend the event in the arms of a fiancé, or even a husband; in this one, Edith Cushing stood alone, holding her own umbrella, the sole black gown to a backdrop of men in suits, her father’s business partners and friends come to pay their respects and say their goodbyes to their friend and colleague.</p><p>She didn’t cry. She’d cried enough in the days and nights before the funeral, for grief and loss, for fear and terror, for a strange sense of completion that she didn’t want to acknowledge. She had buried her mother, now she buried her father. Now, now, she was truly alone in the world.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Carter’s business partners had promised to take care of Edith, employing a lawyer work with Mr Ferguson, the Cushing family lawyer, to ensure that Edith was fully aware of what her father’s business and the legality of her rights to it would be; as she was an unmarried heiress, all her money was still legally hers, with no one able to claim it in her name. For the first time, she was utterly independent financially, beholden to almost no one.</p><p>There was honestly nothing more terrifying for Edith right now.</p><p>She didn’t want financial freedom, she wanted her father alive and keeping her safe from this terror.</p><p>Alan took her out for dinner – something she’d been doing since the day after . . . after. Edith simply couldn’t stomach being alone in the house she’d grown up in for a dinner – in the dining room she’d last seen Sir Thomas, the dining room that she and her father celebrated every birthday, every Christmas, celebration in their house came back to that room. Edith didn’t want to fathom having to eat there alone, to have to accept that she’d be eating there alone for the rest of her days.</p><p>It was something similar in the rest of the house, as well. Edith had Mr Drakes seal up her father’s room, untouched from the morning he’d left, the same being done with his personal office, and his smoke room, and – and the other parts of the house that Edith had mostly left to be her father’s personal spaces. She had a terror of seeing her father’s ghost the way she had her mother’s – her mother had been black and twisted and rotten; she didn’t want to risk seeing her father, his head gaping open, whatever agony her died in clinging to his soul.</p><p>Wearing black mourning, Edith didn’t quite stand out in the scene at the restaurant Alan had chosen – it was a place for people who did not wish for the most fashionable of Buffalo to see them; it was a place people came to eat rather than go home.</p><p>It was always a comfort to see Alan, and with him came related well-wishes from his mother and Eunice, who seemed to have decided to forgive the slight of Thomas Sharpe in the face of Carter Cushing’s tragedy (as well as Eunice’s place as the apparent interest of some Rockefeller man from New York City, whose family was apparently being very smart with lucrative investing). They passed the evening discussing Alan’s patients at his practice, and very carefully not discussing anything Edith was doing, with the exception of touching upon the advice of Mr Ferguson and Mr Picard, the lawyer her father’s partners had placed in charge of Edith’s financial situation.</p><p>Alan took Edith home, and she invited him in for a nightcap. She didn’t want to be alone yet. Then Alan broached his difficult topic. “Edith, I know you don’t want to think about any of this, but it’s important.”</p><p>Edith placed her wineglass on the table, staring into the red liquid – some part of her knew what Alan was about to say, somehow. “Alright.”</p><p>“I don’t think your father’s death was an accident.”</p><p>That was a genuine surprise. Her voice emotionless, she asked, “What do you mean?”</p><p>Alan shifted in his seat, coming a little closer to Edith, before shifting away, like he was trying to figure out the best way to bring her comfort. “I’ve seen dead bodies before, Edith. I completed my work placement at Oxford in a morgue, my first semester. I know what bodies who’ve suffered blows to the head look like. I know how much effort and force has to be applied to make what happened to your father occur. The sink was shattered, in pieces. You can’t break a porcelain sink by slipping, Edith. You can’t do what was done to your father without force, intent.”</p><p>Edith had clenched her jaw while Alan spoke, and prying her teeth apart was a task. “You’re – you’re saying my father was <em>murdered?</em>”</p><p>Alan, ashen-faced and unhappy, simply nodded. Edith – Edith wasn’t sure how to react.</p><p>“Why?” was all she could say, “Why would someone do that?”</p><p>“I’ve been trying to think of that myself. Your father had no enemies, the business was fine, I can’t think of any reason someone might try to get to him – the most eventful thing in his life was the situation between-“ Alan cut off, not wanting to even voice that pain.</p><p>Edith picked it up. “Between Sir Thomas and I.” Alan nodded.</p><p>“But the Sharpe’s left the same day as - - as. And what would they get out of that?”</p><p>Edith had a horrifying thought. “Me. They’d get me.”</p><p>Alan frowned. “What do you mean?”</p><p>Edith hesitated. She hadn’t confessed the papers to anyone since Annie had put her in that bath. She hadn’t discussed them with anyone. She’d been planning to speak to her father about them, but her grief had clouded the Sharpe’s from her mind. But who was safer to speak to now, besides Alan? “Sir Thomas wrote to me, the day he left. He had my manuscript delivered back to the house, with a letter, saying that he did want to marry me, and that my father had ordered him to break my heart. I suppose it was an attempt to manipulate me into coming to him, and having a proposal in some dramatic way.”</p><p>Alan’s frown deepened, the concern clear in his eyes. There was a question he didn’t dare voice – <em>and why not? When did your opinion on Sharpe change?</em></p><p>Edith wetted her lips. “But that morning, the morning of - - everything, and after the dinner, I found papers on my writing desk. I think my father put them there. They were from a – a Mr Holly, I think, he’d been writing cheques to the man for a few weeks, I think he’s a detective of some sort. The papers, they were <em>wedding certificates</em>, Alan. Copies. Of the legal marriages of Sir Thomas Sharpe and, and <em>women</em>. Three women.” Alan stood up, and paced a little, running his hands through his hair, clearly overwhelmed. Edith continued, “I didn’t even know what to think. And then I read his letter, and – I needed some air. I went to the park.”</p><p>Edith capped off her confession with a little shrug, like she knew how unhelpful her ending to the story was. Alan was on the other side of the table, and he braced his arms against the back of the chair direct across from her. He took a breath. “Do you think Sharpe had something to do with what happened to your father? Or his wives, and that’s somehow connected?”</p><p>Edith considered. “When I first saw the papers, I thought - well, I had a thought. If Thomas is some kind of Bluebeard, perhaps, then he’d be looking to marry a rich woman.”</p><p>Alan nodded, simply stating “Eunice.” To punctuate Edith’s point.</p><p>She nodded, “But, Eunice has friends. She has you, she has your mother, she has friends and admirers. If she were to suddenly go missing, they’d notice. They might ask questions. They might find those marriage certificates.”</p><p>Alan looked at her, horror writ on his face. “But you’re not as social as Eunice.”</p><p>She nodded. Somehow, speaking all this out loud had left her with a sort of emotion numbness to the horror of it all. Speak the facts. “And all the family I have is my father.”</p><p>Alan had to sit.</p><p>Edith, hunted by killers. Carter, murdered. His sister, his little sister, nearly in the same position. This was the sort of thing he’d read in his murder-fiction novels, some tangled web that was right at home in the works of Ann Radcliffe – not a reality in Buffalo, New York, in 18--. How do you even respond to a statement like that?</p><p>Edith didn’t seem to expect one – she drained her wine from the glass, somehow calm, before she said, “Alan, I think it’s time we try to sleep.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Alan didn’t sleep that night.</p><p>Edith didn’t either.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>She came to his practice the next morning, during the brief hour between two patients. He was skimming his copy of Conan Doyle’s <em>Sherlock Holmes</em> books, perhaps in a fit of morbid amusement, but he smiled when Edith walked into the room. She tried to return the gesture.</p><p>“It feels a bit like we’re characters in that, doesn’t it?”</p><p>Alan smiled a bit more, before the expression faded int0 something more sombre. “Wish that we had a Sherlock Holmes of our own, solve this for us.”</p><p>Edith was struck by a thought. “Well – well, we might. Papa – before, his chequebook has a line in it with a sum written out for a Mr Holly. The detective he’d hired about the Sharpe’s. He might have some information. We could ask him. Or hire him. Whichever.”</p><p>Alan was struck by a need to move, to spring into action, race off in search of an end to the mystery of the Sharpe siblings. Instead, he stayed put. “Shall I call him, or would you rather?”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Mr Holly was a man of about forty years of age, but his air was that of someone a good ten years older – yet also with the edge of someone accustomed to being on the receiving end of anger, expecting people to react in a negative manner to whatever news he had to give them. Perhaps that was the risk of being in a business where the most common work was being hired to find whatever betrayal was occurring between individuals – this wife being unfaithful to her husband, this business partner cheating that business partner.</p><p>A wily man, Mr Holly wasn’t entirely willing to hand over whatever information he’d found about the Sharpe’s without the promise of compensation, despite Edith’s promise of payment.</p><p>“Excuse Me, Miss Cushing, but your father, god rest his soul, was a loyal and honourable customer. I am obliged to demand a satisfactory reason for your inquiry, as I do not divulge a client’s information, even after their passing.”</p><p>“Even to that client’s next of kin?” Edith queried.</p><p>“Even then, Miss.”</p><p>Alan leaned forward. “Mr Holly, we’ve paid you already. That’s reason number one. Reason number two is that the information Mr Cushing paid you to collect was most likely in service of keeping his daughter, the lady sitting here next to me, safe. Reason three for you to tell us what you know is that if you continue to give us the run-around, I am going to punch you repeatedly until you do as we agreed. Sir.”</p><p>The two querying blondes had agreed to this plan of attack before the meeting, and Edith could not find herself surprised by Alan’s language, or promise of violence. It felt strange to her, that lack – only a few short weeks ago, the idea that her beloved friend could commit such violence would have repulsed and shocked her. Now, after the departure of her father and the betrayal of the Sharpe’s, it was almost a comfort that Alan would and could go to such measures to ensure that she was safe.</p><p>Mr Holly briefly considered their reasoning, before handing over a file of information. Edith peeled open the pages as Mr Holly spoke. “This is the newest information I have obtained.” He pointed to the first page, attached with newspaper clippings. “August 18--. People knew Lady Beatrice Sharpe was awful harsh with her children; but no one would ever dare do anything about it. Then this. Front page news. Quite gruesome, all that blood.”</p><p>Edith jerked back in her seat, flinching at the sight of the pen-and-ink sketch, a woman butchered, her head slumped forward where she lay. An axe or knife had cut her head nearly in two, top of the skull down. The woman was Lady Beatrice, widowed wife of Sir William Sharpe, whom had died nearly two years before in a hunting accident.</p><p>‘Harsh treatment’ of her children? Edith hadn’t gleaned any inkling of such an effect on Thomas and Lucille during her time with them – it had been so easy to picture them growing up in a happy home, with loving parents that doted on them, perhaps with horses and dogs and a bright, sunny home. Seeing the art of the remains of their mother – how must that have effected them? To lose one’s mother in such a grisly manner . . . Edith had lost her mother to the Black Cholera, and there was no denying that the loss had left her morbid in some ways. Would losing a parent to violence make someone likely to willingly commit that violence? Edith didn’t know.</p><p>Mr Holly continued, “The only people living in the house at the time, besides the unfortunate Lady Sharpe, where her children – the son, Thomas, was twelve. His sister, Lucille, was fourteen. Both were cleared of the crime, but Lucille was later assessed to be . . . the only description I can find calls her ‘unstable and potentially dangerous, since losing the authority of her parents’. She was administered as a patient to the Hanwell Asylum within the year after her mother’s death. Of course, this required a large amount of digging on my part. Most sources claim she was at a finishing school in Switzerland.”</p><p>Edith was shocked. Lucille, an asylum patient?</p><p>She’d been a consummate lady, exactly what you would picture as a lady of consequence from England – cool, composed, self-contained, refined. Edith wouldn’t deny feelings of inadequacy when she stood next to Lucille – she just came across as someone above, better, a sense of <em>more</em> than yourself. How could that woman have been considered unstable by a psychiatrist?</p><p>Alan was looking through the further information that Holly had found on the Sharpe’s – the clipping about the death of Sir William Sharpe, how his hunting accident involved his saddle failing, leading to a broken neck. The man had been drunk while on the hunt. There was no picture, but it was easy to imagine that Thomas Sharpe held a resemblance to the father. He wasn’t sure he wanted, or needed more information about this family. He looked to Edith. She didn’t seem very sure about any of this either.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It was a question for the both of them – all they had was information, but what do you do with this? Thomas’ wives may have all died natural deaths. Thomas’ wives may all still be alive. He could have been courting Edith in an attempt to marry her and then take her money before abandoning her, or something else of that nature. Alan wasn’t sure he wanted to imagine anything lesser than the absolute worst of a man courting women while already married – bigamy wasn’t legal anywhere, Alan was sure, but that didn’t seem to stop scoundrels when they really wanted to. Eunice hadn’t enjoyed reading <em>Jane Eyre</em> when she was younger, but she’d been briefly infatuated with the Mr Rochester – Alan couldn’t fathom why, the man was a despicable character, what with keeping his first wife locked in an attic while he set about seducing his daughter’s governess.</p><p>So they were stuck in a dilemma – there was no proof of official wrongdoing. Edith and Alan had a lot of conjecture, and stories about the relationships that the Sharpe’s were a part of, but there was no evidence of criminal activity. Simply a lot of coincidences.</p><p>Alan worked his jaw while Edith reviewed the papers Holly had given them. They were at his flat, deciding that fewer people would see Edith come and go than the nosy neighbours in the neighbourhood the Cushing home belonged to. Alan felt uncomfortably self-conscious at the state of his flat – it felt so obvious that it was a singular man’s home, no woman’s touch out in the open. His mother had helped with the decoration, mostly by styling the place similar to how she’d refurbished his childhood room as he’d grown into a place of maturity. His flat didn’t feel like a place he wanted to bring Edith – it didn’t feel neutral. It didn’t feel like a place she could seem at home.</p><p>Edith herself clearly did not feel Alan’s discomfort, instead scrutinising the newspaper clippings, like she was trying to find the lie in the words. Alan could begin to guess whether or not she was trying to find proof of Sharpe’s innocence of the sins in the writing, but then, he also couldn’t guess if she still held tender feelings toward Thomas Sharpe. She’d been upset at the evidence of his previous marriages, and the words he’d thrown in her face about the quality of her writing, but Alan was aware that affection did not fade overnight. After all, hadn’t he been at Oxford for four years, yet never lost that tenderness he held for Edith herself, even now? And she’d been expecting a proposal. Alan had been expecting a proposal.</p><p>It was obvious now that Carter’s interference in Sharpe’s intentions was for nothing but his daughter’s good, but the shock of the event was something you couldn’t look away from, or even forget. Even now, three weeks after the event, and after Carter’s own death and burial, and Sharpe leaving for England the same day as Carter’s death, people in the clubs and at parties and at the gallery whispered about the insult levelled at Edith by Sharpe. About how Sharpe had simply strung Edith along, the way he had Eunice, for his own amusement, with nothing more intended than to build up her hopes before cutting them cruelly down – just like he had Eunice.</p><p>The consensus of Buffalo, New York, was that Sir Thomas Sharpe was a scoundrel of the highest order, and the city circles that had greeted and welcomed Sharpe and his sister into their embrace were glad to see the backs of them, and should hope the baronet and his sister would never darken the city with their presence again.</p><p>Alan wasn’t about to doubt that his mother and sister – as well as Eunice’s friends – had had a hand in spinning that tale, in the days after Carter’s death and Edith’s obvious grief. For all that his sister and mother could be unkind, Edith’s mother had been a good friend to Mrs McMichael during her lifetime, and Edith and Eunice, for all their differences, had been playmates with Alan as children. Their families were interconnected, forevermore, and his mother was not so cold-hearted that she would turn her back on the orphan Edith had become.</p><p>Edith had never been popular in Buffalo, always too bookish for the young ladies and too feminine for the young men, only truly finding her people in the very select few that shared an interest in the imagination, in the macabre, in oddities and people as odd as those passions. Carter Cushing had been a loving father, but a selective one, not wanting negative influences on his daughter in any way – leaving Edith with a very small social circle, and few friends that she did not share a fundamental difference of pleasures with.</p><p>This loss of company had led to strange effects on Edith, as far as Alan could tell. Teasing from years of being mocked for her sighting of her mother’s ghost and her solitude – possibly meant in good humour, possibly in malice – had led Edith to have a rough outer shell for the effects of such barbs. She wasn’t very good at noticing when a barb was meant in good humour or not – Eunice, Alan knew, was best at teasing with affection, something she’d inherited from their mother. But Edith didn’t seem able to note the difference, and the years stretching between childhood and the present meant that neither woman was as capable of reading the other as they could have been. There was a disconnect between their minds.</p><p>“My mother wanted you to know that you’re invited to dinner whenever you wish, if you’d like to join.” The words felt clunky leaving his mouth, like they both didn’t belong there, but also needed nothing more than to leave. Edith looked up at him.</p><p>“Well, that’s kind of your mother.”</p><p>Not quite a lie, although the awkwardness between the women in Alan’s family and Edith herself was long-standing and not something the three generally tried to indulge in. Alan decided to push through the awkwardness he’d created, and instead cut straight to the main knot.</p><p>“What should we do?”</p><p>Edith bit her lip. “I’m not sure. Is there evidence of wrongdoing?”</p><p>“I’m not sure. Courting a lady for marriage is a social wrongdoing, but criminal? Bigamy is a crime, but the living status of his wives isn’t something I know of. Did Holly have any death certificates?”</p><p>Edith shook her head. “I’ve looked through all his notes – the announcements of marriage, the notes of Lucille at the asylum, the crime scene report about their mother, but there’s nothing in there about death certificates for the women.”</p><p>“Well, without those, Sharpe is legally a bigamist, even if he is actually a widower. I don’t know if there’s a legal case for it. I doubt it.”</p><p>“It might do well to make this public knowledge though. You have friends in England,” Alan did, although a number of them were also Americans who had completed their education and come back home to practice, “and they have friends and family. Sharing the word that Thomas Sharpe is thrice-married with no death certificates for any of the women, yet on the hunt for a fourth – it’s a bad look. It’ll catch people’s attention, and the Sharpe’s will likely end up <em>persona non grata</em> among plenty of circles. Especially the circles of people with money, which they’re trying to marry.”</p><p>Edith considered the plan. There was plenty of evidence that the Sharpe’s were not people without skeletons in their cupboards, and the thought of some other girl being drawn into that web the way Edith almost was struck a chill down her spine. “Would anyone listen to me though? I mean, people know that I . . . was <em>that</em> with Thomas and Lucille. They might simply take it as malicious slander from disappointed hopes. Eunice as well.”</p><p>Alan could see her point. “You’re right. But people also know your character. They know you don’t lie about whether or not you like someone. And, if we pose it right, we could claim that the reason for the lost connection is because your father had Thomas’ background searched, and this is what he found, and he banned any attachment. It’s close enough to the truth.”</p><p>Edith worried her lip between her teeth. “But – but won’t that cause people to wonder how he died?”</p><p>Alan was confused. “We know how he died.”</p><p>“That’s what I mean. The coroner says it was an accident, but you think it was murder. And it someone were to hear about how my father banned Thomas from proposing to me, and were to demand a closer look into the manner of my father’s death . . .”</p><p>“Then we may very well learn precisely who killed your father.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Edith found herself unable to sleep that night. She’s supped and bathed as she normally did – or as normally as she had been since the loss of her father – but there was a sense of something coming toward her. Not something dangerous, or something that wanted to harm her, but a sense of anticipation that simply did not put her at ease.</p><p>She didn’t snuff out the candle beside her bed. Instead, she climbed off the mattress and took the candle into her writing room. It was where she had always felt the most safe and comforted, surrounded by her desk and chair and her books that she referenced when writing for inspiration or details she couldn’t recall. She’d had the night-maid, Emily, keep a small fire going in her study, with a poker and logs close by so that Edith could keep the flames going herself.</p><p>She sat in the seatee near the fireplace, stretching her legs out over the cushions, her robe making her feel cosy and warm with the fire.</p><p>She put on her glasses, and picked up the book she’d left on the table. <em>The Picture of Dorian Gray</em>, by Oscar Wilde. The man himself was scandalous, but Edith enjoyed his prose for the most part. She’d purchased the copy as a lark for her father – he was covertly interested in the philosophies of Wilde, or at least, he wanted to know what it was that Wilde was so wild for.</p><p>Carter hadn’t enjoyed the book, he found the titular character thoroughly unpleasant and not someone he could respect, but some singular lines did find some emotion within him.</p><p>Edith peeled open the pages and began to read, to try and give herself some rest. She felt strangely alert, when commonly finding herself in this position rendered her unable to keep her eyes open.</p><p>The sense of anticipation didn’t go away, and Edith couldn’t help by flick her gaze around the room, like she was expecting someone to be standing in the corner.</p><p>Until.</p><p>Until.</p><p>There was a figure next to the fire. It stood closer to the shadows, like being near them gave the figure a sense of solidity. The figure was red, the colour of clotted blood, before it solidifies into a scab. It was fluid too, a gelatinous thing trying to hold its shape. It was in the shape of a man.</p><p>The man’s skull was caved in. And he was looking at her.</p><p>Yet Edith didn’t feel the sense of terror the thought of ghosts usually filled her with. Instead, she was . . . calm. Warm and calm. This wasn’t an agitated presence. This wasn’t a danger.</p><p>This was her father.</p><p>And her father would never hurt her.</p><p>“Hello Papa.”</p><p>Her voice cut through the quiet crackle of the fireplace.</p><p>The spectre of her father – well, if he had eyes, Edith could imagine he would have blinked. She felt captivated by the sight; for so many years, the memory of her mother’s ghost had haunted her, frightened her. She’d tried to confess her fears and experiences to those about her, to no avail. She’d lived in a measure of terror that the ghost would come back, come back and do something. It hadn’t, but that fear had lived on within Edith.</p><p>But this time . . . Edith wasn’t afraid. Her father’s ghost wasn’t like the black spectre that had haunted her childhood memories. If anything, this was far more grisly. But she didn’t get the sense that her father was going to harm her, or was tethered to her by anger or grief. It was more . . . she had the sense that he was waiting for something. Something that he was willing to wait for, because it was already on its way.</p><p>Her mother’s ghost had been pitch-black, like the plague that had taken her life. Her father was red, like the blood that had been spilled from his skull.</p><p>Edith didn’t want to move.</p><p>Edith moved.</p><p>“Papa,” she whispered, “Papa, can you hear me?”</p><p>Clearly, he could, because as she got closer to him, he moved back. Not quite stepping, not like his feet were firmly on the ground, the way he stood when he was a man, but in an unearthly way, like her mother had when she’d come back to Edith all those years ago.</p><p>“Papa, it’s alright. I’m not afraid. I could never be afraid of you.”</p><p>He stopped moving, the remains of his eyes meeting hers.</p><p>“I know what happened to you, Papa. I’m going to make sure that others know too.” This sentiment wasn’t one she’d seriously considered in the light of day, because she hadn’t seriously thought about what she was going to do with all the information that she and Alan had collected about the Sharpe’s. But now, now, she was looking directly at the remains of her father, there was no other option. The world would know about what the Sharpe’s were doing. The world would know what Alan had realised about her father’s death. No woman would fall prey to Thomas Sharpe again if Edith could help it.</p><p>But her father’s ghost was simply looking at her, listening to her words, realising her honesty.</p><p>Edith kept her gaze level, watching as her father faded out of her view. Where he went, she didn’t know, but she had the sense that he wasn’t gone completely, just . . . waiting.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Edith woke the next morning on the seatee. She hadn’t bothered climbing back into her cold bed when there was a perfectly warm fire nearby. It was only dawn, the light filtering through the curtains directly to Edith’s face, and Edith could wager that she’d be able to return to her room before Annie got there, so as not to provoke any worry in her house staff.</p><p>It wouldn’t be a good idea to sleep out of her bed for many days more though – it was already late October, and the dying and falling leaves promised snowfall. It wouldn’t likely be beautiful, cold blankets on the ground until late November, but the biting cold was already beginning to drift in to the city.</p><p>Edith was beginning to dress herself when Annie came in to wake her, and instead the maid helped her with her hair while giving her a chirpy report of a letter she’d received from her brother in the Navy.</p><p>Edith was normally interested in Annie’s notes from her brother, as he told her of seeing mermaids in the Pacific, and giant turtles that glowed in the ocean at night. Edith doubted that these stories were true, but then, she conversed with her father’s ghost last night. Perhaps they were true fables.</p><p>After a quick breakfast, Edith took her manuscript, Holly’s evidence, and the fountain pen her father gave her to Alan’s practice. He had his patients, but had offered the small desk off on one side of his office for Edith’s use, should she want to write while he worked, and they could talk in between his patients.</p><p>Alan greeted her at his office with two cups of steaming coffee and a hug, happy to see her, despite looking a bit like he hadn’t slept well last night. Edith hadn’t either, but she also didn’t remember actually falling asleep after seeing her father.</p><p>Edith wasn’t certain she should mention seeing him – she’d told Alan about her experience with her mother, but they’d been children then. She hadn’t seen another ghost in the years since, and Alan might to have decided in the years since that Edith’s experience was a piece of her imagination, the way she used to make up stories during their childhood play.</p><p>She sat at the offered desk, and began to go over her story, interspersing her work with skimming Holly’s evidence when she couldn’t think of anything more for her story.</p><p>Her tale was one of a woman, Margaret, coping with the loss of her mother, the ghost being the imprint of her mother left on the earth until Margaret has finally recovered, and then her mother’s ghost moves on to another plane of existence. There was a plot thread in there of Margaret’s friendship with Cavendish, her friend from her time in England, whom she has some romantic feelings for, but she is not able to consider having a romance with him until her grief over her mother is resolved. Mr Ogilvie had told her that the story would work better with an actual romance occurring between Margaret and Cavendish, rather than a simply implied relationship that occurred post-narrative, and if the ghost of Margaret’s mother functioned more as a physical presence, perhaps one of violence that wished harm on her characters.</p><p>Edith could see why Ogilvie would want her to turn her story into that, as a similar premise had occurred in other ghost stories, and those books were not unpopular; but hers was a tale of recovering from loss, with a ghost in the story, but not a main aspect of the narrative itself. You could take strips of paper and use them to make every appearance of the ghost, and you would have less than fifteen occurrences.</p><p>But she wasn’t going to openly admit it yet, but she couldn’t help but want to write about the experiences she was going through now – a young woman of fortune, with only a father in her life, seduced by a mysterious titled man with a cold sister, who wants to marry her and take her back to his home in England, where the woman discovers the remains of her husband’s nature as a Bluebeard, the remains of his previous wives haunting the house the husband and his sister have left dilapidated in the years since the death of their parents.</p><p>It felt like a story that Edith could mould and shape into a compelling story, but she wasn’t certain she could even start it – would it be too on-the-nose for her to write about something that could have actually occurred to her?</p><p>Still, she did note down the idea and brief plot onto a spare sheet of paper, tucking it in between her manuscript’s pages, and instead she picked up some of the evidence of the Sharpe’s misbehaviours. It was a newspaper clipping about the death of Sir William Sharpe, their father. It was an editorial about his death, saying “<em>Sir Sharpe lived in search of his own pleasures, draining his own father’s coffers to the point of open bankruptcy in the social circles the Sharpe family would once claim a natural connection to. Tales of hedonism, spend-thriftiness and neglect of his own children and wife have followed Sir Sharpe for years, and Sir – has noted that these rumours have some place in truth, having witnessed the family in their own home, Allerdale Hale, and the loss of upkeep that has affected the house nicknamed Crimson Peak . . .</em>”</p><p>When she’d read that the first time, Edith had been truly struck to her core. <strong><em>When the time comes, beware of Crimson Peak</em></strong>, those had been the words hissed in her ear by the blackened, twisted ghost of her mother all those years ago. <em>Crimson Peak</em>. Thomas’s home in England was Crimson Peak.</p><p>For the first time, Edith felt like her loss of Thomas’ genuine affection was something of actual good fortune, instead of a stroke of swerving luck away from a man who bore a striking impression of skeletons in a closet. Some part of her had still, somehow, been convinced that had she married Thomas, she could have been happy, she could have loved and been loved.</p><p>The evidence of Holly’s investigation had drained that thought with every story and clipping, and the piece that noted the real name of Crimson Peak had made any remaining emotion Edith still somehow had left for Thomas Sharpe completely disappear. The emotions triggered in her by the appearance of her mother’s ghost all those years ago had stuck with her – and the message she’d been given had as well.</p><p><strong><em>Beware of Crimson Peak</em></strong>.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Edith and Alan lunched at the restaurant down the street from his practice, a quiet place with an excellent steak for lunch.</p><p>They made quiet conversation about his patients, how he had a married couple come in, both of whom were colour-blind, and were concerned that their young daughter was colour-blind as well. Alan told her about the texts he had learned from at Oxford, which had stated that it was a scientific fact that colour-blind men where more common than colour-blind women – a man unable to see in colour could marry a woman who could, and they would likely produce a colour-blind son, but a colour-sighted daughter; but a man and woman, both colour-blind, would only produce children with the same condition as the parents.</p><p>Edith found this interpretation of genetics rather fascinating, wondering if it was something that stretched to other aspects of inherited features – her own father had been a tawny-blond as a young man, and married her pale-haired mother, similar to Alan’s own light-haired parents had produced the blond Alan and honey-haired Eunice.</p><p>They stretched out almost every topic of conversation, putting off the Sharpe’s as a topic until they had absolutely nothing else to talk about, nor anything else to eat. Edith broached the topic first.</p><p>“I think we should give the evidence to the police.”</p><p>Alan was surprised at the firmness of her sentiment. “I think you’re right. Although the Buffalo police likely won’t be able to do much-“</p><p>Edith shook her head. “Then we send it to the police in England. We can talk to the police here first, make sure that they think we have an actual point first, before we send it to England, but . . . I think this is necessary, Alan.”</p><p>He considered her words. “I doubt there’s much that can be done about the Sharpe’s, Edith, but . . . getting your father’s death ruled a homicide, and making it clear that the clues point to the Sharpe’s – do you think that’s enough to get them arrested if they ever come back to America?”</p><p>Edith considered. “I don’t know much about how the law works for crimes, Alan. But I’d wager that we could get them barred from Buffalo, at least.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Detective Draper was a handsome, if aging man, around six feet tall, with a full head of dark hair that was dusted with grey at the temples and accented his hair. He was a former colleague of Mr Holly, before the private detective resigned from his previous post at the Buffalo police department.</p><p>It was due to Mr Holly that Edith and Alan were having this meeting at all, in the restaurant of the Merriot Hotel.</p><p>Detective Draper had arrived early, already drinking a glass of scotch and smoking a cigarette. He did not rise to shake their hands.</p><p>“So,” the man began, speaking around the cigarette in his mouth, “Holly tells me you think your former paramour is a murderer.” His way of speaking was blunt, to the point.</p><p>Edith was unable to speak for a moment, before finding herself. “That is not the word I would use to describe our relationship, but yes.”</p><p>Alan passed the evidence from Holly across the table. “Holly found us this. He’d been hired by Edith’s father, Carter Cushing, before his death, to find out about Thomas Sharpe when he –“</p><p>“Began courting your friend here, I know. Holly told me. He told me how he found proof of multiple marriages, and suspicious and violent incidents at their home in England. I <em>know</em>, Doctor. What I don’t know is, what does any of this have to do with our little get-together today?”</p><p>Edith explained, after a quick look at Alan, “We think my father was murdered.”</p><p>That caught the detective’s interest. “Really?” He finally took the cigarette out of his mouth, resting it on the ashtray in front of him. “Why do you think that? The coroner ruled it accidental.”</p><p>“I’ve studied murder victims, Detective, during my studies at school.” Alan said, “I worked at the morgue. I’ve seen what people look like when they fall and hit their head and die; I’ve seen what they look like when someone has grabbed them by the head and crushed their skull.” He stopped and looked at Edith, to ensure she was still comfortable with his language. “Carter wasn’t an accident. That much damage can’t be done to someone’s head without effort. I mean,” he scoffed, “the sink was <em>broken</em>. His head was <em>pulp</em>.”</p><p>Draper listened intently, before finally bothering to reach for the files from Holly. “Coroner Watkins does have a tendency to write off anything that doesn’t immediately come to him suspicious as an accident. Partly because he’s lazy, partly because the station tends to be busy with robberies and the like, and no one really wants to dig into a homicide.”</p><p>“So you’re all lazy.” Alan was not impressed by any part of the detective, except perhaps his frank honesty at the ineptitude of the Buffalo police. Draper shrugged. “You said it, not me.”</p><p>Edith squirmed in her seat impatiently. “We think we know who did it.”</p><p>Draper looked at her. “Your man, yeah?” Edith nodded. “And why would you think that? Anger at being rejected?”</p><p>His words made Edith flinch, like he thought Edith was trying to build a case against Thomas simply because she was a<em>ngry</em> at rejection.</p><p>“Because, I know that my father told him to stay away from me. To break my heart.”</p><p>“And how do you know that?”</p><p>Edith produced the letter from Thomas. Draper read its contents. “Okay, he’s claiming he’s in love with you. So what? This proves nothing.”</p><p>Alan interjected, “Carter had originally rejected funding some project Sharpe had pitched to his company for investment. Sharpe starts courting Edith. The night before he died, Carter wrote a check to Sharpe, and told him to break Edith’s heart – in exchange for the funding of Sharpe’s project. Instead, the next morning, Sharpe sends a letter to Edith telling her how he wants to marry her, and then Carter ends up dead. Add in that Sharpe has been married before – and Holly did some background on the women – they were all rich ladies too – and you’ve got a picture that doesn’t exactly paint Sharpe in a flattering light. Can you see <em>that </em>painting?”</p><p>Draper had been staring intently at Alan as he spoke. Finally, finally, he nodded. “I see your point. But again, what are you expecting to do? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t exactly have jurisdiction in England, my friends.”</p><p>“That’s why we’re here, sir,” said Edith. “Wanted to ask you what you think we could do about this. Thomas – Sir Sharpe, he’s a bigamist, even without marrying me. Or all his wives are dead, which either incredibly suspicious, or it’s the world’s worst bad luck. We believe that my father was killed by someone with malice, not as an accident, and we believe that the Sharpe’s were involved in that. What can we do?”</p><p>Alan and Edith looked at Draper with impatient expressions. The detective was struck by the thought that the two of them had clearly spent time together during their formative years – their expressions, although different due to their faces, were almost mirrors of emotion. He also thought that the two of them would produce ridiculously handsome children between themselves. He considered their question.</p><p>“Well, at best, simply accusing Sharpe of just flirting his way through rich women isn’t going to look very credible, or sane, frankly. Deciding that he’s been killing his wives also doesn’t look very great, especially since there is no proof of that here in these papers. My captain has a friend at Scotland Yard who’s actually coming for a visit at some point early next year, and I suppose you could broach the subject with him, and present the evidence you have of the Sharpe’s; but again, that plan would be entirely reliant on the ear and goodwill of people who don’t know you.” Drape took a puff of his cigarette. “You could travel to London yourself and present the evidence, or confront the Sharpe’s, but, again, this is all hinged on whether or not you want to look respectable to your jury.”</p><p>“I’ve never cared overmuch about seeming respectable,” was all Edith said in return.</p><p>“You should,” said Draper. “No one on a jury wants to be in a courtroom, and if they’ve been dragged in there by a madwoman, I can guarantee you will lose that case. It’s an unfair world we live in, Miss Cushing. And I would personally recommend that you consider other resolutions to your issue, Miss Cushing. I seriously doubt you’ll get a satisfactory answer from me.”</p><p>Alan worked his jaw, before asking, “But is this proof enough that they have committed wrongdoing, yes? Isn’t there something we can do with it?”</p><p>Draper considered. “Mail it to the biggest gossips in London. In England, or Europe, whatever, and tell them that Sir and Lady Sharpe are on the hunt for his fourth wife. I imagine it would do the trick, it you wanted to ensure they couldn’t ever boggle another woman into marrying them.” He shrugged, draining his glass.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Somehow, their lunch with the detective was everything Edith was expecting, yet an utter let-down. They sat, somewhere between dejected and relieved, in the sitting parlour at the Cushing house. Edith plucked the eyeglasses from her face, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I think Draper’s right.”</p><p>Alan gave a slow blink, not saying anything verbally, but the expression encouraged Edith to continue. “I think we should copy all the information we have and disseminate all of it everywhere we can. To the cities those women where from. We can’t actually prove anything, but I imagine that their families may see it and prove something all on their own.”</p><p>“You don’t think we can prove the Sharpe’s wrongdoing.” It wasn’t a question.</p><p>“I think . . . it shouldn’t be our problem. Perhaps it is our obligation, but if there truly is nothing we can do, then all we can do is truly all we can do. We can prove they are suspicious people who have done suspicious things, we can prove that Thomas has a history of marrying wealthy, solitary women, who all seem to have disappeared and whose money seems to have also disappeared; we can provide evidence contrary to the coroner that my father’s death was not accidental. We can do all of that. We can’t drag the Sharpe’s into a courtroom and demand they share the truth of these suspicions. They wouldn’t. They’d hang.”</p><p>“If we do as you say, they may hang anyway.” Alan’s expression, his tone, asked the question he’d never state out loud: <em>is that what you want for them? For Thomas? You loved him.</em></p><p>Edith wasn’t sure she still loved Thomas, or if she ever had, but . . . “If that is what justice for his wives will look like, then I will live with that on my conscience.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>A year or more later, when she received news of Sir Thomas and Lady Lucille Sharpe’s ascension to the hangman’s scaffold, Edith found that it was not a heavy pall on her conscience. Not at all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Would you believe that this was originally going to be a ship-fic? I don’t know what happened. </p><p>Yes I do. I got wrapped up in the ‘how do I write my way out of this hole’ that I got in with the ‘let’s prove they’re criminals’ plot that the romance was like, Maybe Another Day.</p><p>I could see myself actually writing that fic one day, but clearly not this one. The next time I’m bored in class and need to look busy, I guess. That’s literally how I’m doing all my writing, because my classes are either A)Really boring, B)Stuff I already know, or C)badly taught and all the information is online and I can get it at my own leisure. Uni, amiright?</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>